Introduction

When I was growing up in London in the 1960s and 1970s what British children of all cultural backgrounds were not made aware of – in schools, in history books, by the media, or by popular film and television – was that there had been a black presence in Britain since at the least the mid-sixteenth century. Black historical figures from the past had been made invisible, and there was a wall of silence around Britain’s black history. Regrettably, this is still the case.

However, I was lucky. I had an aunt who had been born a black Londoner in 1912, long before the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in 1948 with the first wave of post-war Caribbean settlers. The arrival of Windrush was not a historical discovery for me, but a simple fact of my family life. Unlike my contemporaries, my relationship to Aunt Esther gave me, from an early age, an awareness of the pre-1948 black presence in Britain.

Esther’s childhood

Aunt Esther’s father, Joseph Bruce, the son of Guyanese slaves, had travelled to London on “a ship and a prayer” during the Edwardian era when very few black people lived in the capital. He worked as a builder’s labourer and raised Esther alone after her mother died at a young age.

Joseph instilled in his daughter a sense of pride in her African heritage by informing her about some of the black achievers of the time in which they lived, such as the Croydon-born composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and the heavyweight world champion boxer Jack Johnson. On Saturdays Joseph took her to The Granville, a popular music hall in Fulham Broadway, and on Sundays they went to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park.

Esther recalled, “We were walking through Hyde Park when a toff passed by and insulted my Dad who retaliated. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ he asked. ‘Where do you think you are? In India or Africa? When you’re in England I’m no boy to you. I’m your equal so don’t call me boy or there’ll be serious trouble.’”

A proud man, Joseph always made a defiant stand against racism. In the early 1920s he was responsible for the sacking of a teacher who instructed his daughter and her (white) classmates at her school in Fulham’s North End Road, “not to talk to coloured people.”

Jennie

In 1928 Joseph married Jennie, a children’s nurse who had also travelled to London from Guyana. She taught Esther how to sew, and that was the profession my aunt entered after she left school. Esther worked as a seamstress for sixty years from the age of fourteen until she retired at the age of seventy-four.

Sadly, in 1933, Esther lost her step-mother, whom she described as “a lovely, sweet woman”, when Jennie died from tuberculosis. From 1935 Esther was employed for several years by Miss Mary Taylor in Markham Square, off King’s Road, Chelsea. It was a happy time for my aunt. Miss Taylor treated her well, and Esther told me they made dresses for “ladies of the court” (Buckingham Palace) and several famous women including the glamorous black American singer Elisabeth Welch

Marcus Garvey

In the late 1930s, in North End Road, Esther met a famous black citizen of Fulham: the Jamaican nationalist leader Marcus Garvey who had settled in the area in 1935. She told me “he was a nice chap but he knew what the English were up to. He wasn’t treated with respect like I was because, he said, ‘The English are no good.’ I said, ‘There are some good people in this world’ but he didn’t make many friends in Fulham. In the market in North End Road the costers wouldn’t speak to him, but they would speak to me. It was a class difference. We were working class.”

At the time of his death in 1940, Marcus Garvey was living at 53 Talgarth Road.

The Blitz

For many years Joseph and Esther Bruce were the only black members of their tight-knit working class community. Esther fondly recalled the community spirit that existed before and during the Second World War, “In the old days the people of Fulham used to be one big happy family and we helped each other. We were poor but people cared about each other. People were friendly and that meant a lot.”

During the Second World War Esther left Miss Taylor to work as a ward cleaner and fire-watcher in Fulham Hospital and Brompton Hospital. She also helped unite her community during the German Blitz. After the death of her father in 1941, Esther was adopted by her neighbour Hannah Johnson (my great-grandmother), affectionately known as Granny. She was the matriarch of their community.

Esther said, “After my father died, Granny took me in. She was like a mother to me. She was an angel.” Esther and Granny lived at 13 Dieppe Street which they called “Lucky 13” because half the street was bombed, but their house survived.

Before the war, apart from entertainers like Adelaide Hall and Elisabeth Welch, there were very few black women living in Britain. However, during the war, the British public came into contact with many black women who were recruited in the Caribbean to join the ATS, and the nursing profession. They travelled to Britain to support the war effort.

The Windrush Generation

A friendly, outgoing woman, my aunt integrated easily into the culturally diverse London of the 1950s, but she was horrified by the attacks on black Londoners which resulted in the Notting Hill race riots of 1958, not far from where she lived. She said, “It was a terrible time for black people. I didn't think anything like that would ever happen in this country. Afterwards I noticed a change in some white people.” She believed that “if they'd stopped Enoch Powell and the National Front right at the beginning they wouldn't have got a hold.”

Aunt Esther’s Story

In 1991 we published her life story and from my conversations with Aunt Esther I learned about the importance of oral history testimony which has become a major feature of all my books. The existence of a local publisher, Hammersmith and Fulham’s Ethnic Communities Oral History Project (ECOHP), enabled us to publish the book. This had been set up in the 1980s because members of local ethnic groups felt that their experiences were not being expressed in historical publications, exhibitions and educational resources.

They also felt that false assumptions were being made about the countries where they or their parents were born. As a citizen of Fulham, Aunt Esther qualified as a subject for one of ECOHP’s publications. With their enthusiastic support, Aunt Esther’s Story was published and the book gave my aunt a sense of achievement and pride towards the end of her life. My aunt died at the age of 81 at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on 17 July 1994 of heart failure. Following her cremation, I scattered her ashes on her parents' unmarked grave in Fulham cemetery. Granny and Jennie rest nearby.

Documentary and The Oxford Companion to Black British History

Since that time I have continued to pursue a career as a historian of black Britain, publishing books including the award-winning Black in the British FrameA Ship and a Prayer and Speak of Me As I Am: The Black Presence in Southwark Since 1600.

This year I have completed a documentary about Aunt Esther’s life and contributed an entry about her to The Oxford Companion to Black British History. She has an entry because the editors recognised her importance as a historical figure, even though she wasn’t famous. This means that Aunt Esther takes her place in the Companion alongside such well-known figures as Mary Seacole, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Dr. Harold Moody, Paul Robeson, Claudia Jones and Marcus Garvey. She would have been delighted.

On Saturday March 10 Stephen Bourne’s documentary Aunt Esther’s Story will be screened at the Imperial War Museum during his illustrated talk We Also Served: Black Women in Wartime Britain 1939-45.

The Oxford Companion to Black British History will be published on March 22 by Oxford University Press (£30).